Month: June 2007

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Movable Type: The Princess Time Forgot

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Once upon a time Burningbird ran under Movable Type. In fact, the weblog ran under Movable Type for at least a couple of years. But then, I also ran a Radio weblog, one through Blogger, my own form of WordPress (Wordform), and WordPress off and on–currently on.

At one time, Movable Type was the princess to Blogger’s Queen, a potential successor to the kingdom of Blog, Blog Away. Ben and Mena Trott were feted and fawned over. They were even invited to contribute to the book on weblogging that O’Reilly published, and to which I contributed.

Then that new darling, that rapscallion, WordPress came along with that era’s latest incarnation of wunderkid. Combined with Movable Type’s new, and loathed, licensing system and performance issues, MT still stayed a princess, but of what kingdom, no one really knew.

Today, nudged by Arthur in comments, and announced by Read/Write, Movable Type version 4.0 is on the way out to thee and me, and with its Typepad inspired performance enhancements, and hip, Web 2.0 interface, comes the politically astute move: Movable Type 4.0 will be open sourced.

Of course, there is open source and then there’s open source. To me, open source means I can create a fork of the product. According to Six Apart’s MT open source page, MT will be a true open source, licensed as GPL.

This is a smart move in many ways. First, it reminds us that MT still exists. Today, the big stories in technology related to weblogging tools tend to be about what dumb ass move the tool company or organization has done recently; not necessarily, ooh, look, shiny new release. This includes Six Apart with the recent fiasco of deleting too many Live Journal weblogs in its effort to be ‘child safe’. Open sourcing the MT code raises the noise level around the tool just enough to be heard among the recent Google/Microsoft/Yahoo et al stories–something that’s becoming increasingly difficult.

Secondly, Six Apart can do what it will with regards to licensing MT, including dropping support altogether for the product in order to focus on its more profitable hosted services. If it can get the ‘community’ to take over support, it means Six Apart is no longer trapped into supporting MT forever. I imagine right now that’s tempting.

Lastly, Six Apart can benefit from the creativity and skills of any number of open source developers, none of whom have to be paid. Wow, that must seem like finding a grape lollipop on the ground, still in its wrapper.

On the downside, my first reaction reading this was, “I’d give anything for a really exciting tech story, right now.” Movable Type is part of another era. An era where releasing a new version of MT would cause the news to shoot to the top of Daypop. Remember Daypop? I bet most people reading this do not. They’ll remember Mena and cries of “Asshole!”, but not necessarily the tool that built the castle that is Six Apart.

It was surprising to hear that MT is being open sourced. Surprising, also, to read that Anil Dash is vice president of Six Apart now (when did that happen?) More surprising to see a positive review by Duncan Riley.

It was good, though, to be reminded of this princess that time forgot. To see her crown polished, and her sequined gown fluffed out and shiny. Too bad that she returns to the dance so late; many of us have already left the ball.

Categories
Social Media

Up and coming startups: Bitchrs and Doomrs

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Through the encouragement of my advisers, I decided to publicly announce the beginning of a new super-secret stealth project: Bitchrs. As pitched in comments, the premise behind the service is that …you can pay people to be mean to others for you. That way you can say what you want, without having to be personally accountable. I mean, it doesn’t get more Web 2.0 than that, does it?

I was inspired to begin this effort by Guy Kawasaki, when he wrote on his Truemers effort:

In total, I spent $12,107.09 to launch Truemors. During the dotcom days, entrepreneurs had to raise $5 million to try stupid ideas. Now I’ve proven that you can do it for $12,107.09.

Ha! I can beat that. I can throw together a startup in five days, for $43.86 and a case of diet orange pop.

I’m already contemplating the spinoff once Bitchrs goes big–and we all know it will go big–inspired by Marc Andreessen’s post, Bubble? There ain’t no stinken bubbles!, and his sabre tooth tiger economics:

The human psyche seems to have a powerful underlying need to predict doom and gloom.

I suspect this need was evolved into us way back when.

If there is a nonzero chance that a giant man-eating saber-tooth tiger is going to come over the nearest hill and chomp you, then it’s in your evolutionary best interest to predict doom and gloom more frequently than it actually happens.

The cost of hiding from a nonexistent giant man-eating saber-tooth tiger is low, but the cost of not hiding from a real giant man-eating saber-tooth tiger is quite high.

So hiding more often than there are tigers makes a lot of sense, if you’re a caveman.

Cavemen, tigers, and dot-com bubbles. It fits. So much so that I’m not waiting for the inevitable success of Bitchrs and am introducing the new super-secret stealth project now: Doomrs, where you can hire people to supply all the criticism, caution, and skepticism that you, yourself, believe with all your heart, BUT are afraid to vocalize and still be invited to hang out with all the Kool Kids.

Ladies and Gentlemen, forget Flickr, forget del.iciou.us, forget Google. This is the face of Web 2.0:

Bitchrs. We bitch, so you don’t have to.

Doomrs. Reality hurts. Don’t be real.

For early subscribers, a bonus service: Gripelets for Twitter.

Categories
Environment Places

Ameren and the shame that is Taum Sauk

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

A couple of days ago, the Southeast Missourian did a fluff piece on how important Ameren is to the Lesterville school system:

Earlene Fox, superintendent of the Lesterville School District, said many entities are trying to decide how much to fine Ameren, turning the issue into a political hot button.

Meanwhile the livelihood of Lesterville’s residents is in jeopardy as a result of the December 2005 breach at the Taum Sauk Reservoir that caused significant flooding in the Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park.

This has been typical of Ameren, getting friendly folk in Reynolds County to trot out the Lesterville school system and jobs in order to put pressure on the political figures running for governor–Attorney General Nixon and Governor Blunt–to settle the Ameren/Taum Sauk situation quickly. What’s different is that both Nixon and Blunt are working together on the issue of a fine for Ameren, so why is the school system being dutifully trotted out this time?

Well, the answer came out today, in a story released by the AP and appearing in papers and other publications in the country (and outside the country). According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the gauges that were supposed to turn off the pumping station when the water was high and in danger of overtopping the dam were not faulty: they had been deliberately moved.

Yes, basically the safety measures to prevent the dam from breaking were deliberately circumvented by Ameren officials. Why? Money. More water meant more profitable electricity being generated.

Interviews with Ameren employees by The Associated Press over the past year have confirmed Ameren’s practice of filling the reservoir as high as possible because every foot of water represented profitable electricity generation. That sentiment was also made clear in the patrol’s report.

Taum Sauk Superintendent Richard Cooper told patrol investigators he felt pressure from his bosses after he ordered the water level to be slightly lowered to prevent an overflow in October 2005.

“Cooper stated that he had people above him and below him that wanted to know what was going on. Since the upper reservoir was set two feet lower, that was resulting in producing less mega watts (sic) of electricity,” the report said.

The amount of water that rushed down the mountain when the dam broke, a billion gallons, was five times of the amount of water of the Johnston Flood, the worst ‘natural’ disaster to impact this country. If the Taum Sauk dam break had happened in summer, hundreds of people would have died. If the lower reservoir had not held, whether the Lesterville school has a new roof or not would be moot.

All of this, so that the Ameren officials could pump in an additional two feet of water, and generate that much more electricity. Even when officials knew of the risk involved.

In addition to tampering with the safety equipment, the evidence was tampered with after the break, as the gauges were removed from the dam and left lying next to the wall before Ameren ‘allowed’ DNR agents in to examine them. Ameren also refused to provide requested evidence to the State Patrol.

No criminal charges are being filed because the State Patrol supposedly cannot find the person who moved the gauges originally, or removed them from the wall after. Of course not: Ameren isn’t cooperating, and wasn’t forced to cooperate.

Neither Nixon, in his position as Attorney General, nor Governor Blunt are pursuing any further investigation, though obviously criminal actions have taken place–and continue to take place, with Ameren refusing to provide materials demanded by the State Patrol. After the public relations campaign run by Ameren and supported by some community leaders in Reynolds County, to do so is to brand both as being ‘against schools’. With an upcoming election, neither the Republican candidate nor the Democratic has the courage to seek true justice.

I’m sure, though, that Ameren will provide a nice visitor center at Johnson’s. Maybe a new gym for the school, too. The company is such a good servant of the people.

Update.

The Public Service Commission, which recently granted Ameren’s request for a rate increase in Missouri, have re-opened their investigation of Ameren’s conduct based on the AP story.

Ameren has come out with its own press release, stating that the story did not have any new information from that of the FERC report a year earlier.

However, there is considerably new information: the FERC report focused primarily on the physical evidence and repercussions of decisions made. At no time was economic motivation discussed, nor was the fact that the gauges were removed after the dam break recorded — or at least not as far as I can see in the report.

Should there be more investigation? This state seems incapable of dealing with this situation and Ameren. I imagine the best anyone can hope for is to hit Ameren where it will hurt–the company’s pocketbook–and then keep the company on a short leash. A very short leash.

Categories
Technology

If you can’t say anything nice…don’t weblog

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Comment to my post:

However, if you don’t use Zooomr, you shouldn’t criticize. If you didn’t donate, you shouldn’t criticize.

Bullshit.

Zoli’s Weblog:

I’ve never thought I would agree with Shelley Powers one day – she often attacks people and tends to be mean. Her comments on Scoble’s blog were somewhat vicious… but I have to admit she raises valid points. Zooomr is a great service (when it runs) but is far from being a professionally managed company, as recognized CEO Thomas Hawk himself.

Go me.

Categories
Media

A brief Sci-Fi aside

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

For all Stargate Atlantis fans who watched tonight’s show, see this site for information about today’s story.

Also, in the news today: the next season of Battlestar Galactica, the fourth, will be the last. The producers promise a wild ride.